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On October 27, 1892, in the city of Quebrangulo, in Alagoas, Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira was born, one of the greatest novelists in the history of Brazilian and Latin literature, the first of the 16 children of Sebastião Ramos de Oliveira and Maria Amélia Ferro Ramos. He was raised on the Pintadinho Farm, in the hinterland of Pernambuco. At the age of seven, living in Viçosa, Graciliano began to study at the Alagoas Boarding School. It was in this school that he saw his first work published: the short story Pequeno pedinte, in the little newspaper O Dilúculo (dawn), under the signature of G. Ramos.
In 1905, Graciliano went to Maceió, and was enrolled in the Colégio Quize de Março. At this time, he dedicated himself to the study of English, French, and Italian. At the age of 17, under the pseudonym Almeida Cunha – one of the writer's habits was the adoption of pseudonyms – he published the sonnet Céptico.
When he turned eighteen, he arrived in Palmeira dos Índios, where he began to live, helping his father in his commercial establishment, a small fabric store. Between 1914 and 1915, then in Rio de Janeiro, he worked as a proofreader for the newspapers Correio da Manhã, A Tarde and O Século, under the initials R.O. (Ramos de Oliveira). Then he returns to Palmeira dos Índios, where several of his family members die in an outbreak of bubonic plague. It was there that he married, on October 21, 1915, Maria Augusta de Barros, a seamstress from the interior who died five years later, leaving him four children. In 1917, he began to work as a shopkeeper, and nine years later he married again, this time to Heloisa Medeiros.
On January 7, 1928, Graciliano took over the mayorship of Palmeira dos Índios, an experience that offered him material for his first novel, Caetés, published only in 1933. In 1930, he resigned from his position, and was then appointed director of the Official State Press, from which he resigned in December 1931 for political reasons. The following year, he began to put on paper, in Palmeira dos Índios, his second novel, São Bernardo, largely written in the sacristy of the city's Mother Church. In 1933, he was appointed director of Public Instruction of Alagoas – a position today corresponding to that of Secretary of State for Education -, remaining until 1936. Because of what, at the time, was called "extremist ideas", he was arrested and imprisoned without regular process in several prisons in Rio de Janeiro. His drama and that of his fellow inmates would be recounted in Memórias do cárcere, published posthumously in 1953.
Angústia, released in 1936, is considered the most technically complex novel by Graciliano Ramos, in which the author portrays the city of Maceió at that time. But it was in 1938 that the author wrote the book that would become his masterpiece: Vidas secas, his fourth and last novel, focused on the social and geographical drama of his region – the best expression of his style, with a regionalist emphasis. Graciliano Ramos – Mestre Graça, as he was affectionately called – dies in the City of Rio de Janeiro, on March 30, 1953, at the age of 61.